Guild Wars 2

Fun trapping you in the alcove -

Signed – that Thief you just couldn’t kill.

Bazeleel.8219:

Shadowstep is a great idea. It removed 3 conditions and gives you 2 stun breaks. The issue with it is that the range is way to short. Your dodge can cover a little over half of the full range of SS. It really is only good for the stun break and the condition but I think it needs a bigger range.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep

Range 1200.

If you meant the SS on infiltrators – it would be completely overpowered if it was 1200 range since it is spammable.

Fubuki.7162:

DemonCow.5328:

I’m getting really tempted to make the jump to Kaineng.

You really should, if for no other reason than Kaineng has a Mooncow. I can’t wait see what happens when a DemonCow and a Mooncow combine forces.

Mooo!

This game kind of shows that anyone can be a support class if they so choose.

Take Thief for example – best spammable blast finisher in the game – you could set yourself up to do nothing but trigger combo fields for healing and buffs.

Find a class you really like and sculpt them into what you want.

I run 10/0/0/30/30 kitten P and SB. Steal is basically OP and I like 30 in acrobatics right now for basically no-stop troll-dodge. Running on Kaineng (always outnumbered) has probably made a large impact on the choices I have made – basically super survivable and very mobile.

Purely a WvW small party/zerg flanking build. Rolling with a mix of invader and knights gear – very durable.

Signet of Agility for the condition removal and emergency dodge storage (precision is a bonus), Shadowstep for the ultimate get out of jail free card, and shadow refuge because of the utility during zergs (rezzing and stomping).

Conditions are a joke to this build (inf strike, return on shadowstep, signet, heal, pain response).

But the core is low cooldown steal that does so much with one instantaneous shot:

Oh and steal during daggerstorm is probably broken.

I’m tempted to try S/D but the ease of stomps with black powder is just so hard to give up. P/D is probably better for this type of play.

In an online game participation and numbers are everything. If one side isn’t showing up for whatever reason at all, then something is wrong.

Give the players options that would encourage server load balancing.

Good: moving from a high pop/queue server to a low one
Bad: low to high

Currently the system encourages the Bad way.

Players moving from a low pop (losing) to a high pop get the benefit of easy exp/karma/gold and reduced death.

All we want is to play the game against a modestly even battlefield – this is when the game is by far the most fun. Extremely lopsided gameplay does not have lasting appeal for either side.

Encourage PvP and not PvD.

Down 3 orbs to the local zerg team and sick of repairs? I may have to add this to my hotbar. lol

Do the devs play WvW in any form?

Do they play on a server that is getting destroyed because of population imbalance?

Do they have fun playing either side of these lopsided matchups?

C Gunner.9406:

This idea wont work, you can just transfer to an outside server then transfer into the enemy server.

It would be nearly trivial to check prior servers you’ve been on recently and deny any moves that would put you against those.

If the game isn’t balanced more so that everyone playing has some level of fun, it won’t last very long.

This game is very fun when you can get semi-even numbers in the game.

I play on Kaeneng – constantly out-numbered and always fighting people with 3 orbs. I’m still here, but when my friends leave, I will be leaving too.

Chewy.9263:

Again, you’re going on about data from only a month of gameplay. Short term results cannot predict long term. An example ingame was HoD vs. SBI vs. ET. HoD was losing in the first 3 days, but eventually pulled out a victory.

You can’t expect things to instantly happen.

Except you are ignoring the simple fact that the game will most likely LOSE players over the long term.

Using the most populated servers to make a point also ignores the issues of the lower population servers.

ANet is dropping the ball on this hard. Most players just want to have fun and the current system almost seems to be working against that.

Morale will improve as the beatings continue.

Strange, my teamates and I were commenting on how we felt that the drop rate had increased.

We play on Kaineg.

Fubuki – so gold

Being the underdog is a lot more fun (and profitable with the out-manned buff) than riding the zerg. You get to move around all ninja like.

Path of Least Resistance and Positive Feedback Loops.

The first is revealed when the weaker of two worlds will attack each other even though it would be ultimately in their best interest to work together to oppose the stronger of the three. Rewards for capturing should be balanced on the strength of the opponent.

The rewards for teaming up against the winning side should be a bit more organic and palpable to the basic zerglings. Maybe these guys will eventually get that fighting over the gates at the ogre camp (against the losing side) instead of defending Mendon’s while the dominating server is at your keep doorstep isn’t the best move. Of course the guys on the other side of the ogre gate know that this is an easier target than pushing/angering green. Perhaps if they knew that they would get double or triple the points for capturing the winning teams locations they wouldn’t be spending as much time fighting the weaker server.

The second (positive feedback) is typically a bad situation in complex engineered systems when the goal is relative balance. The rewards for dominating in wvw should typically not be in the form of positive feedback (orbs are probably too strong). Most of the servers that end up getting rolled in wvw have plenty of players – there is just a tendency to give up and bounce to pve (or a winning server as I’m sure is quite common) – the rewards for trying to overcome are just not obvious enough for the server to achieve a critical mass of bodies to compete. The stronger server gets stronger and the weaker servers get weaker. This doesn’t create a welcome environment for game-play for either side. Everyone loses.

This is not going to be an easy solution. But the problem is extremely obvious. Almost every matchup is just a blowout – sure there are a few than can maintain some balance, and I’m sure that experience is about as good as it gets for this game (and probably something that most players interested in wvw are looking for).

From a designer’s perspective, they should be interested in getting everyone to have fun (even when their side is losing). Right now that’s just not happening enough.

Lately I’ve been just skipping around servers seeing what it’s like (almost always on the losing side as I just move on to another server if I get a queue longer than a few minutes) – It’s just rough at times really (try rolling on Kaineg for example).

The game is still new, but I can see a lot of people just giving up on wvw because of this issue. The top servers won’t have an issue with this (except for the heinous queues), but there should be some interest in keeping the wvw populations healthy and competitive all through the ranks.